and training. projects, meals are provided for students, teachers, and cooks. next, on american history tv, we hear about the history behind swanson, from doug author of "cult of glory: the bold and brutal history of the texas rangers." while the rangers emerged out of a wild and violent texas, he argues it's time to confront atrocities they committed against native americans, african americans, and mexicans. the falmouth, massachusetts museums on the green hosted this event and provided the video. >> the rangers were one of the most famous law enforcement organizations in the world. i would put them up with

scotland yard, canadian police, the fbi, that sort of thing. they have been around longer than any state law enforcement organization in the united states. and they have this worldwide image. that is what i am going to explore a little bit tonight. how they got this image, what this image is, but i think we all have some idea of what a texas ranger is. maybe from tv's and movies, if nothing else. that was my first exposure to the rangers. growing up in florida, i watched this disney show called "texas john slaughter." some of you may have seen that. the theme song was texas john slaughter, made them do what they outta, because if they didn't, they would die. the lone ranger may be the most famous cinematic and tv, radio rangers that started in 1933. out of wxyz in detroit. the script was originally called

"the war on lester man hunter." but then they changed it to "lone ranger." we would still be talking about it today. the rangers have been in hundreds of movies. there have been hundreds of books written about them, hundreds of magazine and newspaper stories. that is how the image was built. i will go into that a little more. first, i want to get a brief history of the rangers. and then talk about why the texas rangers have residence and -- residents and a place in a conversation we're having now nationally about police brutality and approaches to history and all this taking down of the confederate monuments. the rangers have a place in that too. i will try to toggle to vintage

photos. this is the first time i have done this. if i mess up, i'm sorry. i have my technical assistant and my lovely wife to help me if we mess up. i will try to pull of photos and do a slideshow. slidephotos and do a show. i hope everybody is seeing that. this is lone wolf gonzalez. a famous texas ranger in the 1930's, 19 40's, and 1950's. -- 1930's, 1940's, and 1950's. he was a sharp dresser. he has the custom boots. the lone wolf was, by all accounts, a good ranger. there are many rangers who were heroic, upright honorable, courageous, valorous individuals who formed a public service in texas.

whether you agree or not, whether the anglos should have settled texas, setting that aside, texas would not be texas without the rangers. they were a valuable force starting in 1823. we have to say there were many terrific people who rangers continue to be. i don't want this to be seen as an attack on the rangers, but i want to get behind the myth of the rangers themselves. lone wolf gonzales gives us a good example. because he was a good ranger up -- ranger, but concerned with his public image. there was a saying, i know you heard this applied to other politicians, that there was no more dangerous place in texas than lone wolf gonzales. when he finished being a ranger he rode off to hollywood and became a tv show consultant.

he put forth his own public image. it was said that he killed 75 ranchers. that was not true. he never disabused anyone of that. he claimed to be descended from spanish royalty. that was not true, either. he claimed to have fought in the mexican army as a mexican soldier, that was not true. one time, a reporter was hanging out with him, and they ended up spending the night together in a hotel. i don't mean to imply there was anything strange going on, there was no other rooms in the town where they work. the reporter woke up that morning and saw the loma -- lone wolf shaving with his towel on on andhat and boots nothing else. the lone wolf explained that is what he did every morning. put on his hat and his boots. that was lone wolf. the first rangers came together

in april -- in 1823 when the first anglo settlers came into texas. stephen f austin led the first anglo texans. that is him in the center of this painting that comes from the library of congress. what he is doing is urging settlers to go out and kill the indians. they were a coastal tribe who had been in texas for thousands of years, but they were very large, very muscular, very tall, they smeared alligator grease on themselves to keep the mosquitoes off them. they put rattlesnake rattlers in their hair and were said to be cannibals. first time he saw them, he recorded in his journal "these people must be exterminated." what he is doing is urging settlers to exterminate these indians. the first 10 rangers, they were not formerly recognized by any

government. they were formed in 1823 to protect settlers against the indians. was one texas was still a part of mexico. -- this was when texas was still a part of mexico. they did not do any fighting and they ran out of ammunition and food and returned to their day jobs. that was the beginning of the rangers. 197 years ago. and eventually, they were exterminated in about 10 years. they could not put up much of a fight. they did not have the ammunition or population to fight the settlers and they were long gone. texas became an independent republic in 1836. soon, they had to fight the comanches. the comanches from 1750 to 1850, they were the most powerful

indian tribe in north america. that is because they were the greatest horsemen in north america. this is a painting of comanche horsemen. they were very clumsy on foot. they were short, weren't very much good at anything. but when they got the horse, people who would see them, white men would see them and say it was like watching a thin tar -- a centaur. it was one beast, comanche and horse. what the comanches could do was have a little strap that they rolled onto with their foot and they would lean down beneath the neck of the horse and fire their arrows. they can fire up to 30 hours in a minute. so the anglo settlers and the rangers were using a single shot pistols and muskets.

they would fire and have to reload. in that minute it took them to reload, the comanches would fill them with arrows. it was not an easy fight. an even fight. the comanches were called lords of the plains. they ruled the planes from colorado into texas for these many years. jack was a ranger captain. jack had a ranger company that was one of the first companies in the american west to use the revolving pistol. it was a five shot pistol that samuel colt developed and then went broke. but jack hayes and his company of rangers got hold of them and used them to fight the comanches. that's when the tide turned. no longer could the comanches wait for the rangers and others to fire their one-shot and have to reload. that began to turn the tide. jack hayes is seen as one of the great ranger captains of all times.

he was brave, he was fierce, he was a terrific tactician, any also led some companies in the mexican war. the mexican war was in 1846. the u.s. invaded mexico, and the rangers went and joined the army to fight against mexico. they were, at that time, army soldiers. but they stayed to themselves, they did not dress as army soldiers. they stayed dressed as rangers. read you a brief passage from a book by a new englander called "my confessions." it's a terrific book. he was from new hampshire and boston, and he encountered the rangers in the mexican war. he wrote, "the rangers were the scouts of our army and a more reckless, the devil may care it would be impossible to find this side of the region, shirts black

with grease and blood. some wore red shirts, their trousers thrust into their high boots. all were armed with revolvers and bowie knives. together with their bearded faces, lean and form and swaggering manners, they were fit representatives of the outlaws that made up the populations of the lone star state." here is where the rangers made their reputation. the mexican war had a number of war correspondents recording what had happened. they were enamored by the rangers. they saved a lot of american lives. they kept american soldiers from ambushes. they fought guerrilla warfare very effectively.

they were extraordinarily valuable to the u.s. army. at the same time, they were noted for their atrocities. they took prisoners and they killed them. they often wiped out the civilians in villages for no reason except revenge. and ulysses s. grant, a later president who was then a lieutenant in the mexican war, wrote a letter to his wife to be. he wrote, "about all of the texans seem to pick it perfectly right to impose upon a city of a conquered city to any extent, even to murder them where the act could be covered by the dark." how much they seemed to enjoy acts of violence. texas rangers in the mexican war came to be known as los diablos tehanos. -- tejanos. the texas devils. they wore that as a badge of

pride. the mexicans feared the rangers because of their fighting ability and rangers because they -- and their atrocities. here is an engraving that shows samuel walker on the horse, one of the most famous texas rangers fighting in the mexican war. this is the death of samuel walker in a village in mexico near the end of the war. that is not how he died, he was shot. it was a traumatic rendering of him being pierced with a lamp. walker was one of the more vilified rangers. he was instrumental in perfecting the colt revolver into a six shooter. it became the gun that won the west. samuel walker was a pioneer in that regard. he visited a cult and helped him work on this new gun.

colt and helped him work on this new gun. texas is a pro state. it's before the civil war, it's the 1860's. this is a cartoon that ran in harper's magazine called "young texas in repose." the figure on top is texas with the scars, sharp teeth and the knife. he is sitting on a slave, who has been whipped, stabbed, shackled and abused. texas was a slave state before the war. texas ordered mexico and the underground railroad in texas ran self to mexico. if you were a slave and wanted to escape, you probably ran to mexico. once you got across the rio grande, you were free, because slavery was illegal in mexico at the time. the rangers, in some cases, had slave hunting expeditions into mexico.

they would go in, try to seize the slaves, bring the back across the border, and sell them in texas. hence, this cartoon. rangers did a lot of valuable things. they captured this outlaw, john wesley hardin, one of the great gunslingers of the old west. here is john wesley hardin as a dead man. the rangers did not kill him, they put him in prison, where he learned to become a lawyer. he got out and practiced law and was shot to death in el paso by either a dissatisfied client or a lover. no one is quite sure. the rangers were in sure mental in capturing a number of bad guys, including hardin. let's move to the 20th century. 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915 on the new mexico border, the rio grande valley in texas.

this is a post card at the time. the men on horseback and rangers. the men on the ground are dead mexican bandits. the rangers were sent to sell texas at the time because the border was in place of -- was a place of great violence and of people. -- and upheaval. there was a revolution going on in mexico. at the same time, there was a land boom going on in texas. so the rangers were sent to keep the peace. what did that mean? it meant that the rangers, depending upon your source, killed hundreds, maybe thousands of mexicans and mexican americans, including these for here. -- four here. some of them were bad guys, some of them were abandoned's. many of them, hundreds of them were only mexicans are mexican-americans who lived on land that the white people wanted.

so they sent the rangers into force them off the land. sometimes that meant scaring them, burning them out, sometimes that meant killing them. rangers were known at the time as "common man killers." they operated "death squads." they had a list of people that the anglo powerful wanted dead, so they killed them. the rangers became as feared by mexican-americans along the border as the kkk was feared in the deep south by black people. they were a terror to these people. now to the anglo powerbrokers who want this land, they were a godsend. it depended on which side you are on. -- were on. this is where the rangers got their reputation as a force of

death along the mexican border. that is a reputation that has been impossible for them to shake. we will talk a little bit more about that when we get to the end. here is a ranger company around the turn-of-the-century. well armed with the texas flag flying in the background. later, in the early 20th century, there were 450 lynchings in texas. from 1885 to 1930. most of them, of black men. some of them, hispanic men and women. in 1919, which was known as the "red summer" because of racial violence, texas rangers conspired with police chiefs and sheriffs in texas at the governor's order to quash the civil rights of black people.

they conspired to keep them from voting. they conspired to keep them from meeting to pursue their civil rights. they blocked their mail. they instructed local gunshot -- gun shop owners not to sell them weapons. they infiltrated their meetings. it was all aimed at keeping black citizens of texas from exercising their civil rights. this picture is from 1930. in sherman, texas. the black man is in shackles and is named george hughes. he was accused of sexually assaulting a white woman. so, he went to trial. this is him being led to the courthouse, from the jail to the courthouse, for the first day of his trial for assault. the rangers were brought in to protect him. four rangers. you may have heard the slogan "one ranger, one riot." this was supposedly said by a

ranger who showed up one day where there was a riot going on in the local law enforcement -- and the local law enforcement official said there is only one of you and the ranger allegedly said, you only have one riot. that never happened. there are a number of statues, signs, and monuments around texas that have the slogan, one riot, one ranger. here is what happened. george smith is on trial for assaulting a white woman. first day of trial for rangers are there to protect him. this is insurance, texas. -- this is in sherman, texas. a farm town north of dallas. a mob formed outside the courthouse. a mob of white people. they decided to storm the courthouse to get george hughes. they got to the second floor, which is where the trial was taking place. the rangers fired some shotgun shots at them and the mob are -- the mob retreated.

the rangers thought they had it fixed. but then the mob set fire to the courthouse. the rangers locked george hughes vault on the second floor to try to protect him. the courthouse was ablaze. the rangers climbed out the second floor window of the courthouse. got in a car and left town. the mob waited for the fire to burn out. they got george hughes out from the vault, through his body out -- threw his body out the second floor window, drag it through the streets behind a car and hoisted it from a tree limb on a noose in the black part of town and set it on fire. that was your one riot, one ranger. this is indicative of the rangers' problematic history with race. here is one of the best examples. the man leaning up the tree is a ranger named j. banks.

he was sent to a town called mansfield, texas, which is between dallas and fort worth. the naacp, after brown v. board of education was to integrate texas schools. -- wanted to integrate texas schools. which were all white. and they chose mansfield as the place to start. this is mansfield high school. they arrived with a court order, ordering local officials to enroll black students. so the governor sent in the rangers to keep the peace. i know you have all seen pictures, and maybe like me you're old enough to remember in places like arkansas and mississippi, federal troops in the national guard were deployed and the national guard were deployed to make sure that black students could enroll. we have seen the photographs and the famous norman rockwell painting of a black student being led past speeding and yelling mobs to enroll in

school. the rangers were there to keep black children out of the school. you see there is a figure hanging from a noose. that is a black figure hanging in effigy over the school. a mob formed outside the school carrying a sign that said "black children must die." "kill all blacks." it did not say blacks, you can imagine what it said. the rangers, under the governor's orders, were ordered to prohibit black students from enrolling. they sided with the mob. j. banks, because of that, here in mansfield and a week later in texarkana, texas, because of this photograph, which circulated worldwide, became the face of the opposition to integration in texas.

this photograph ran in newspapers all across the country. a couple more things to talk about, and then we will deal with the rangers in general. this is captain, alfred ali, who is a distinguished ranger in south texas. he was one of the toughest rangers ever. how do i know he was one of the toughest ever? when a texas firemen patrol wrote his wife a traffic ticket for a burnt out tail light, he went in and he said his wife was lying, so he pistol whipped the highway patrolman. he would pistol whip or slap you. that was how he handled people he did not like. in 1967, there was a farm workers' strike. they were hispanic and paid

maybe $.50 an hour to pick melons. they lived in shacks. they had no medical care. to get water, they had to bend down and drink the puddles from the ground. so, they were aligning themselves with cesar chavez forces out of california. the melon growers asked them to bring in the rangers. he did. they broke the strike by harassing the strikebreakers by beating them, by arresting them for no reason. by holding their faces inches from speeding freight trains that were barreling through town. and they were successful. the rangers were strikebreakers in many cases. they broke steelworkers strikes, coal miners strikes. they even at one point broke a cowboy strike up in the panhandle of texas. this is one of the most famous

in 1967 led by the captain. and later, in several courts and the supreme court and findings from the civil rights commission's censored him. in his defense, he was just a man out of his past. he once said these doggone civil rights is the dammed thing i ever heard of. when he retired, he was hailed as one of the greatest ranch captains ever. he settled back in his hometown of south texas. one day, he went to the store to buy a jug of water. the young hispanic clerk rang up a price of $1.75. the captain thought it should be $1.45. so he slapped the clerk and pulled his pistol on him. it was the captain until the end. one more ranger anecdote. this is henry lee lucas.

he was, at one time, the most famous serial killer in american history. this was in the late 1970's, mid 1980's. he supposedly killed perhaps 300 people across the united states. this was a guy who only had one good eye, his right eye. he had an iq of about 85. he had a fifth-grade education. yet, he was able to go all over the country killing hundreds of people, never leaving a single clue. not a fingerprint, not a hair, not a shell casing that could be matched to him, not a tire track, nothing. not a witness, ever. but the rangers had him in captivity.

and he began confessing to these crimes. police officers would come in from all over the country and lucas would confess to unsolved murders, so they would clear these murders. every time they would clear a murder and confessed to a crime the rangers would put a pin and a map. they ran from coast to coast. from texas to canada, from california to new england. between 200 and 300 workers this man confessed to killing. the murders were attributed to him. the rangers had the deadliest, most dangerous man in america in captivity. they were very proud of that. a lot of the rangers got a lot of glory out of that. in 1985, the dallas newspaper ran an expose and showed that lucas could not have committed these murders.

he may have committed three of them. his mother, his common-law wife and a woman he worked for. but evidence proved that he could not have been in these places when he claimed to have committed these murders. and what later came out was that he was allowed to see the files on these murders before he confessed to them. that is how he knew to say, yes, i killed the woman in this place. yes, i used a knife, or, yes, i used a gun. but it was all a hoax. when this was exposed, the rangers said -- we did not know it was a hoax. all we did was make lewis available. we deny investigate his whereabouts, we were his custodian. we cannot have known he was lying. not have known he

was lying. we do not probe his whereabouts, his background, anything like that. that's what the rangers said. when i was researching this book, i found the rangers' record in the state archives. no one ever looked at them. what i found in those archives was proof that there rangers were lying. they did know it was all a hoax. they didn't know lucas committed these crimes. they had an extensive investigation into the whereabouts and they knew it was impossible that he killed someone in shreveport, louisiana when he lived in maryland, or killed someone in baytown, texas while he was working in jacksonville, florida. they knew all this but kept it secret. i don't know why. i think it was because they did not want to admit that this was a hoax. they did not want to admit they played along.

there is a problem beyond it being public responsibility. every time a murder was cleared attributed to henry lee lucas, the investigation stopped. that means that these 200 plus murders that he confessed to for dozens of years while lucas was believed to be the suspect, no one was looking into these cases. these killers were walking free. and the rangers allowed that to happen. there is the book. a couple of things i want to add and then we will go to questions. remember, the photo of j. banks leaning against the tree and front of a high school with a black effigy was hanging. he was the model for a statue of a texas ranger that was completed in 1960. why was he the model? because he was the good-looking

guy, the sculptor said he looked like a ranger. so the sculpture, the statue was made. it was 12 feet high on its base. the base said, "one riot, one ranger." the statue itself was placed in the early 1960's in the lobby of love field airport in dallas. which is the main city which is the equivalent of midway airport in chicago. and it stood in the lobby of dallas love field since the early 1960's. i am an old white guy, so i never paid much attention to that statue. but let's remember that j. banks was the face of official

opposition into integration of texas schools in the 1950's. would you feel if you were an african-american getting off a plane in dallas and that -- and that is one of the first things you see, the statue of j banks? maybe your parents or grandparents could not enroll in a school of texas because of what they were doing. within days of my book coming out, the city of dallas took down the statue of j. banks. i don't know where it is now, but they were alarmed at the message that the statue may have sent. this was at the same time a lot of confederate statues and statues of columbus were coming down across the south and across the nation. at the same time, we were having and are still having a debate about police brutality. going back to what the rangers did along the border in the early parts of the 20th century,

i have said before, the rangers did not admit to brutality, but they perfected it along the border. they were very rabid, effective practitioners of police brutality for a long time. this has become part of the discussion. now, there have been suggestions that the texas rangers baseball team should change its name. the colonists from the washington post said the texas rangers baseball team is having none of it. there are many discussions taking place and museums across the state and elsewhere that glorify the rangers and don't take into account the histories of hispanics, blacks, native americans, and i think it's really important, as the rangers come up on their 200th anniversary in 2023, and since

this is texas, there will be a lot of pedantry in celebration, i think it's really important that the rangers face up to their history. for many years, their image has been promulgated by this propaganda factory that they have operated. all these tv shows we saw about the rangers in the 1950's and 1960's. if the producers wanted cooperation from the rangers, they had to get script approval. the rangers only approved scripts that showed the rangers in a flattering way. now, i think it's really important, as we are approaching this 200th anniversary, for the rangers to acknowledge the other side of their history. let's talk about the honor, the courage, and all the good things they have done, but let's also talk about the history of hispanics and blacks as it relates to the rangers.

the natives and other people. i think it's really important to do for a number of reasons. it's fairer. to give voice to people who have not had a lot of voice. and i think it makes the rangers appear stronger as an institution. i don't think it diminishes them at all. if we start talking about, for example, the civil war and slavery, and facing up to what happened, does that make us weaker as a nation? no. it makes it stronger. i hope they take this opportunity to do that. they are not sharing their plans with me at this point because they were not that happy with the book in many ways. but i hope that's what happens. that is a history. i'm happy to answer any questions. that was awesome. -- >> that was awesome. my son is sitting here with me. we are both sitting here widemouth, particularly when he

-- you talked about bringing people within inches of speeding trains. as i'm listening to you, and anybody who knows me knows that i love following the stories of world war ii, but these clearly sound like third reich-esque tactics. int would never happen the u.s. a stalin-esque theme. you had a litany of things that went on that went on in the time from exterminating indians to the mexican war to the evolution of the colt revolver. it may be inadvertent for your point in terms of how this

happened, but given all the tactics that were used, and the conversations going on today, you just mentioned that you think they really have to come forth and 'fess up to their past. do you think that's possible? do you think they will be able to do that? >> that is a great question. to preface it, think we have to be aware of what's called presentism. judging the acts of someone to -- of someone 200 years ago by our present standards. we have to acknowledge that texas in the 1800s and 1900s was a wild and violent place. the rangers were reacting to that. it was tough men in a tough time.

that has to be a knowledge in this discussion. acknowledged in this discussion. but, there is no doubt that the rangers were, for much of their existence, acting under orders from, and on behalf of of the white anglo power structure in texas. and if that meant wiping out indians, mexicans, and quashing the civil rights of blacks, and looking the other way when people were lynched, that is what they were there to do and told to do. do i think they will acknowledge that? i am a little bit hopeful. i am hopeful, because i am starting to hear from those who official custodians of ranger history. i cannot be any more specific

than that at this point because it's not ready to be released yet. i am hopeful that it will be soon. but i think they are feeling the pressure. another reason i am hopeful, there is a state texas museum in austin called the bullet museum. a few years ago, they put up an exhibit of violence on the border. it was very graphic and explained the rangers roll and -- rangers' role and the role of others. that was a real change. i'm hoping we see more of that. i think the rangers, and those who have been the custodians of their image will realize they are out of step. texas is becoming a majority/minority state. i think the citizens are going to insist on that. i think the national climate brings that to bear, as well. we are revisiting this all over

the country, except maybe parts of the deep south. i am from the deep south, so i can acknowledge that. it is happening. it's happening slowly. but this is a little bit of a switch. just to give you an example. a different metric. there have never been many texas rangers. right now, there are only 160 texas rangers in the state of texas, in the state of 30 million people. most people in texas have never seen a ranger. four of them are women. eight of them are black, and 34 are hispanic. they did not have any women rangers until 1993. they did not have black rangers until 1988, that was after an naacp complaint. it's changing, but it's changing

slowly, and it's tardy. and we would like to see if -- see it further along, but it is changing. it is a long answer to your question to say, yes i am hopeful. would i bet on it, probably not. how cooperative were they, the texas rangers? you mentioned about the keepers of the flame. how cooperative were they with you in researching this? how long did it take you to compile this? >> individual rangers were cooperative. individual rangers operate often independently. there is a prominent lack of bureaucracy within the rangers. the individual ranger does what he thinks he needs to do. for example, i spent the day with a ranger in southeast texas. great guy, terrific ranger, terrific law man, and a credit to the agency.

the rangers' officials would not cooperate with me at all. the book took five years to research and write. i spent all five of those years trying to get cooperation out of the rangers officials. emails, phone calls, letters, personal appeals -- nothing worked. they wanted nothing to do with me. the only comment they have had on the book so far is that historians will judge its veracity. they have not said anything else. the rangers have a professional operation, and they have changed dramatically. they have standards, and training, and they are a professional law enforcement organization, and a really good one in many ways. but the rangers are under what

is called a texas department of public safety, and that agency is not known for its transparency. with me or any other journalist. so, it's a problem. i would like to see more transparency, but i'm not too optimistic about that. >> you clearly told us some anecdotes about individuals and activities. were there things that you found in your research that you just simply could not put in the book? either they were just too heinous, you cannot verify? things that you had a whoa moment, i'm not trying to touch this one moment? >> i was interested in george hughes being led to his or date. -- his court date. there is a photograph of his charred corpse being hung from a tree.

i cannot put that in the book. there were so many incidents that at some point you just have to say, can i put another atrocity in here? am i piling on too much? there were atrocities on both sides. the comanche indians were notorious for torturing anglo settlers. there were atrocities by the mexican forces in the mexican war. it was not one-sided. but to answer your question more directly, it was more a manner -- matter of volume than individual incidents. i could have gone on and on and talking about executions and atrocities and war crimes and at some point you just have to say, i hope i've made my point and move on to the next one. >> we have some questions coming in. this is from somebody in the audience. a fellow floridian. i appreciate your work on this issue.

there has been a long issue of "night writing" as a tool of enforcing white supremacy in the antebellum time for reconstruction. there is a lot of evidence that many of the people involved are public officials, including police officers by day and violent vigilantes by night. i was wondering if you would talk about the rangers who functioned as rangers for extrajudicial activity. didn't valorize the rangers -- did it valorize the rangers about texas or the rest of the south? >> it was no secret that in the 1920's, 1930's, there were many rangers who were members of the kkk. night riders were also called white cappers. in texas. every now and then, they would

arrest people involved in racial disturbances, white people, but they rarely went to trial. it was extremely rare for someone who was involved in a lynching to be prosecuted. going back to the sherman lynching, where the mob turned -- mob burned down the court house. the rangers ended up arresting nine people, only one of them went to trial. he was convicted of arson. he served a very brief sentence. if we are looking at the time of the 1920's, 1930's, when racial violence, 1910s, when racial violence was across texas and across the south, the rangers did very little to stop it. yes, it's true, many of the night riders were law

enforcement officials. law enforcement was complicit in hand with that. at one point, the national director of the naacp, a white man, came to texas to try to talk to the governor about racial violence. violence against black people in texas, saying we want some protection. the governor issues to see him in austin. he saw the rangers, the second in command, the assistant general, and he asked for protection, because he believed his life was in danger. he was a white man, but was the head of the naacp. he felt he was in danger and asked for protection and the assistant general refused. he walked out onto the streets of austin, where he was accosted by three public officials who

beat him savagely on the streets of austin and put him on a train to st. louis and told him never come back to texas again. these were public officials, they were not prosecuted. they were hailed as heroes in texas. that is the way it worked. >> were the rangers an act of the military unit during the civil war? did they stay together? >> there were some rangers who became confederate soldiers. there is one particularly famous unit part of the confederate army. there were other rangers who controlled the frontier, quasi- rangers. their purpose was to protect settlers against indian attacks. in general, the rangers were dormant during the civil war and during the era after the civil

war. and in the era right after the civil war, the jim crow era, the rangers only reformed as an official unit. in the 1870's. >> why did you undertake this project? when you did, did you have a good idea of what was going on, or were you surprised at what you were finding? >> i have been carrying the idea around in my head for a long time. i was a newspaper reporter for more than 30 years. i was planning to do a story about the rangers and never got around to it. i had written another book about a texas character who is a racketeer. he moved to las vegas and started the world series of poker. after i wrote that, my publisher said, we want a big texas book. so i said, what is bigger than the rangers? i set about thinking i would just do a comprehensive history of the rangers thinking it would take me a couple years. i underestimated the amount of

material i would have to go through. what i found as i started poking around, i found stories behind the myths. a lot of the myths began to fall apart right away as soon as i began poking into them. i want to say that many other scholars who had written about the rangers' atrocities on the border or in the mexican war, or elsewhere, and i was not the first to get there. but in the other cases, it had been done in a fairly discreet way. they had written about one small piece of history, or one geographical part of texas, or something like that. what i wanted to do was put it all together across the nearly 200 years and see what it looked like as a whole. i began assembling that hole.

that is what surprised me. how every time, every era i looked at what the rangers had done -- and again, they did a lot of good. i have to keep saying that. but once you start looking behind legends and taking the myths apart, some pretty bad stories began to emerge. i began to see how the rangers, again and again, covered them up. they not only covered them up, but took these terrible incidents and remanufactured them, transformed them into stories of heroism. it was uncanny. it was really surprising to me. that is one reason it took me five years to pull all of this together. >> how has this been received in texas? besides the fact that they took down the statue. what has the reception been? covid-19, i am

here in pittsburgh, i have not been back to texas yet. i don't know if i will be shot. i am getting lots of support and lots of really good emails. the reviews have been great. sales have been good. at the same time, all i have to do is go to the book's page on amazon.com and there are plenty of people lining up to tell me what an idiot i am and all of that. i'm not a real texan. someone wrote the other day that i hate texans, which will come as a surprise to my wife and two children, who were all born in texas. i spent half my life in texas. but i would say, on the whole, more than on the whole, the reception has been very good. the newspaper and radio coverage has been very encouraging. i think it taps into a recognition that many people in texas have had that it's time to look at this. there are some who don't want to talk about this. they do not want to examine the

myths and the legends. i am dismissed as another woke liberal who wants to poke holes in heroes. that is not the case. what i wanted to do was, as i said earlier, tried to tell the -- try to tell the whole story because i think that's really important. as a writer, that's far more interesting to me. >> you always have the internet. trust me. [laughter] you can never get too full of yourself, the internet will always make sure. the protagonist of texas rangers said he joined at age 16. were there any requirements to join? >> the first part of the question was? rangers,"song, "texas the protagonist that he joined at 816.

-- at age 16. is that realistic? >> that israel. -- that israel. -- that is real. there were some at the age of 14 and 16. if you knew the captain, if you had been shot and want to go out and fight people are chase indians. if you are immune to danger, it was for you. you could be a ranger. certainly there were very young rangers. that is about all the requirements that were in place for many years. it was only until the 1930's, the mid-1930's, that the rangers began to adopt standards and requirements and training to make the rangers into a professional force. before that, it was if you're in the right place at the right time and knew the right people and wanted to work in bad

conditions for low pay, but had the title of ranger, then you were there. >> i don't think you are a woke liberal, i think you have done a great piece of research and history. i have this on order. it's a fascinating read. i have been looking forward to this one. i want to thank you very much for joining us. thank you for taking the time. thank your wife for being the technical advisor behind-the-scenes. good luck with this book. i know it's already on the bestseller lists. you don't need my good wishes. good luck with this. thank you for joining us. i want to thank everyone else for being in the audience tonight. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] up with a stunning the week on facebook, twitter, and youtube. with what happened to this day in history and see preview clips of upcoming programs. follow us at c-span history. >> american history tv is on

c-span3 every weekend featuring museum tours, archival films, college lectures, and discussions on the presidency and more. you can see this on the entirety of our website, c-span.org/history. >> here's a quick look at one of our programs. way to study the treaty of versailles is to look at these three. there is no one american answer answer to the covid crisis. these things are determined to whether youve, are middle-class or working class, all kinds of things will determine your response. it is more interesting, the way in which the debates reach across national lines. the big one is, do you want to solve these problems at the national or imperial level? if you are british, do you want to open up the entirety of the international trade? or do you want to do this by

increasing those imperial tides? increasing tariffs, keeping americans out of those markets, and trying the best as you can to enforce the empire. those arguments are out there. does notial argument win at the end of world war ii. there are two completely different contexts. in the u.s., the debate over the treaty of versailles is fascinating. there's a group of senators that think, i don't care what is in the thing, i'm not signing it. another group says look, there are ways in which this is unconstitutional, the league invasion would drag the united states into a war, is unconstitutional, you can't do that. there are ways in which this ties. there are also people making the argument, one nation, one vote. why would we as americans except

the same level of power in an international organization that ecuador would have? why would we do that, on a pure power bases, it makes no sense, which is why in world war ii, the u.s. had the five vetoes and the -- in the council. there are arguments that are perfectly legitimate. hadnents of the league legitimate grievances. there are things we still talk about, the world health organization come as you want to see a part of an organization in which you pay money knowing you're probably not getting as much out of it as a smaller state would because you believe in the health of international organizations? if you accept that principle, the who membership makes perfect sense. if you don't, you won't do the. -- do that.

the french situation is a little bit more complicated. >> that was a short look at one of our many programs available in its entirety on our website, c-span.org/history. american history tv, exploring our nation's past every weekend on c-span3. >> next, on the presidency, a look at presidential retreats. we will see abraham lincoln's summer cottage, herbert hoover's shenandoah mountains fishing camp and hear stories on the kennedys, clinton's and obama's in martha's vineyard. the white house historical association provided this video.